New View EDU Episode 31: Full Transcript

Read the full transcript of Episode 31 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features a discussion about the rapid evolution of artificial Intelligence and the impact ChatGPT and other AI innovations will have on the future of schools. Host Tim Fish is joined by two educational innovators: Christina Lewellen, of ATLIS, and Paul Turnbull, head of school at Mid-Pacific Institute.

Tim Fish: Welcome back to New View EDU. I am so excited to kick off Season 4, and as I look back over the last 30 episodes, I'm amazed by how much ground we've covered and how much there is still left for us to talk about. This season, we're gonna take a look at dignity and strategy. We're gonna look at about the relationship between rigor and deep learning. We're gonna explore more innovative new school models and we're gonna look at places where student agency, experiential learning, and purpose are brought to the forefront of school design.

And just like in our previous seasons, we’re going to dedicate our last episode to a panel discussion. However, this time, instead of school heads, we’re gonna talk with some students. It’s about time we listen to their perspective on what learning design should look like for their future. This is going to be an incredible season.

You know, we’re gonna kick things off with a topic that’s on everyone’s minds right now: Game-changing technology and, in particular, ChatGPT! What is it, what's next for it, how should schools respond? These are questions that are on the minds of educators and school leaders today. And I couldn't think of two better people to help me dig into this topic than Christina Lewellen and Paul Turnbull. Christina is the executive director of ATLIS, a quickly growing association representing technology leaders in independent schools. And Paul is the President of Mid-Pacific Institute in Hawaii.

Paul and Christina, thank you so much for joining us. I am so excited to have you for this conversation. 

Christina Lewellen: Thanks, Tim.

Tim Fish: It's amazing. We've been talking in education about artificial intelligence and AI and how AI is going to affect education. I can tell you, I've done a ton of talks where I've had some picture of some AI thing on the screen, and most of the people in the audience, I'll tell you, have gotten kind of glazed over.

They're like, I'm not sure what exactly AI is going to have to do with education, how it's going to affect or impact education. And then somewhere around November, December, ChatGPT shows up on the scene, and boy, have things changed. I think we all now have an incredible understanding of just how AI potentially may impact education.

You know, so I asked ChatGPT exactly what ChatGPT is, because I was curious about that. And ChatGPT said that it is a large language model trained by open AI. It can generate human-like text for a wide range of tasks, such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation. It is based on the GPT—generative pre-training transformer—architecture, which uses deep learning techniques to generate natural language text. And I kind of read that and said, all right, I need more help than that. So please, Paul, Christina, tell our listeners. What exactly is ChatGPT, and where did it come from?

Christina Lewellen: Well, I don't know, Tim, if I can answer that specifically, but I will say that it certainly made quite an entrance, especially in December or so, made kind of its presence known in the education circles because students were using it almost as a substitute for Google or for search navig– you know, search bars like saying, how do I do X or how do I find Y or how do I code this problem that I have? And so ChatGPT has suddenly like exploded in terms of the awareness. But I think in a lot of ways it's just getting us thinking about what AI has been kind of plugging along and, and bringing to our world all along. It's just now that we have a name to put on it. And so Paul, I don't know if it's kind of popped up in your school universe in an aggressive way, but I will say that, you know, what is it?

I'll say it's a big old topic of conversation. That's what it is.

Tim Fish: That's what it is right now. I'll tell you. You can't open a newspaper, if we open newspapers anymore, and not see something written about ChatGPT. In fact, we had some people over our house yesterday. And I had a friend sitting next to me at the kitchen counter and we were chatting and I said, “Hey, have you heard of ChatGPT yet?”

And my lovely wife who was in the room said, “Oh no, don't let him start talking about that again.” So Paul, what do you think?

Paul Turnbull: Well, Tim, that sounds like conversations I've had at home and with my friends as well. You've gotta see this. Try this out. What do you think about this? I'll give you a different viewpoint on the thing that you were just talking about, you know, from the, from the, the pre-metaverse, we'll call it.

The funny thing about being on a school campus is that ChatGPT was released end of November. We saw, you know, you've read all the headlines about a million users within five days and all the rest of that stuff, and the hype cycle has been completely skewed. But what I, what I appreciated about the, the conversations here on campus at Mid-Pacific, really they circled around the fact that I was going into our, our technology center and we have a, a cadre of EdTech coaches and, and a number of teachers and this immersive technology program that we have.

So we're, we're pretty well versed in the, in the idea that things may accelerate quickly. And what I appreciated was probably within a half an hour of introducing it, so I felt all proud of myself because I was ahead of them, they basically had come back and said, all right, here's how we're going to take a stance. Within four days they had experts in AI standing in front of the students and in certain classes. We had a number of different resources and sort of technical models available for teachers. And we've already figured out, I'm just looking at, you know, sort of this list of, of things we've done for our teachers already. We have a faculty resource deck. There's, you know, ChatGPT and learning new vocabulary. So if you are an English language development student, there's the AI revision helper. So how can GPT be a peer editor? Here's a, you know, here's a planning doc, here's how to prepare for your English department meeting.

And then there's the shared padlet. How can we have a, a hub, sort of, this common marketplace for teachers so they can go in without fear of, you know, not knowing how to ask the right question or not knowing if they want a presence, their level of comfort. They're able to say, okay, here's what everybody else on campus is doing so far, and we're purposely working with them to take a stance, that is that ultimately AI assisted tools, especially generative AI, they're here, they've been with us for quite some time. There's the conversation about, you know, all going back to what it was like going from a typewriter to a word processor or you know, manually writing down your formulas in calculus to a graphing calculator.

This is different, right? This has been around us for quite some time and we know that preparation now in starting with the open mindset is actually I think, the most important thing.

Christina Lewellen: You know, Paul, I'm so glad you brought up the calculator example, because you and I met back in February. I came to your campus and I was working on a story and for ATLIS's magazine, and you gave me an example that stuck with me about the graphing calculator and I actually included it in that article.

I thought that you would be the perfect head to speak to about ChatGPT, because not only do I know you are kind of on that cutting edge of thought leadership when it comes to AI and education, but also because of your calculator story. You know, meaning that like, literally you were doing it one year on a legal pad, the next year you showed up and there's this new tool. And it took some time. It took some adjustment because people were mad that they had to do it on the legal pad. And now we're, you know, we have this tool and it's going to in some way undermine our intelligence or our society. I think that you are kind of an open thinker and a really creative, you incorporate these things into your school in really creative ways.

But did your teachers freak out a little? Like was there some pushback? Were there concerns in those months? You know, November, December timeframe? Were you up there just kind of going, this is great, guys. Get on board?

Paul Turnbull: Yeah, no, that's, first of all, thanks. I appreciate the, the calculator story. You know, the, generally the, the outcome of that story, Tim, is that we have, we have to realize in education, education as an industry will always be behind the pace of the real world. 

Tim Fish: That's a great point.

Paul Turnbull: You know, so for, for me as an educator, my, my never-ending goal, you know, has always been how do we shorten the delta between what happens in the real world—so, in this case, ChatGPT—and what are the teachers and the students experiencing and seeing and discussing in the classrooms and hallways on a campus? Do we have to wait for four years of college before we're, you know, in air quotes allowed to touch these things? Or can we integrate these things right now?

And so our, our teachers, they represent, I think, a more innovative stance than say, a traditional school. However an individual would like to, to define traditional. But we ran through the, you know, call it the stages of grief or the stages of, of shock, whatever you want to describe it. Yeah. It was, you know, it ran the gamut from, from concern to curiosity to excitement. Our goal, of course, is to recognize that all of those feelings and emotions are swirling around like whitewater. So how can we divine the best path forward right through that, that whitewater that says here, here's the context, here's the environment in which we reside. Here are some tools for you to use, and here are the helpers, right? Here are the individuals who can help you along the way. 

But again, it starts with that open-mindedness and this realization. Wow, this thing really isn't going anywhere. So can ChatGPT be more of a collaborator than perhaps a foe? And that's the thing I, I really appreciated the most.

Tim Fish: Yeah. That's right. That's right. You know, and it's funny too, like Christina, you were the person that introduced me to ChatGPT in an email you were kind to send to me. I think it was in December and I, and I got, I, that whole night. ‘Cause I hadn't, I had not yet heard of it. Because you are so on, like you're right on the edge.You're always just ahead of what's really going on. 

And I, that whole night, was just throwing things at it, right? Trying things out and I was thinking, oh boy, this is going to really be, have major impact on our schools. I even took an essay that my daughter, who's a senior in college, was writing for an English class and a prompt for the exam that the teacher gave. This very, sort of compare these two short stories, use historical references and direct quotes, and show metaphor and, and how the author's intent was to make a comment on, you know, 1920s society, et cetera.

Right? So it was like, deep. So I took the exact long prompt and threw it into ChatGPT, and it wrote this thousand word essay like it was supposed to. And I showed it to my daughter and she said, that's way better than mine, right? And so, and we, and we were both like, what does this mean? What is this world going to look like?

But my use of it, I'll tell you over the last month, has evolved. It's gone from being this sort of what I would call answer-giver, right? So like, write this or do this, or make this in a, in a single prompt, right? Where I give it a thing, it does a thing, and then I take that thing and go do something with it, right?

It's moved from that to being what I would refer to as either a tutor or a thinking partner. Right. And so I've started, like I'm really into, I'm kind of a World War II geek and I've started just posting in prompts about certain things, right? And then just almost having a conversation with it where I'm saying, tell me more about that. Or what was really at play when this was happening? And I know that it's maybe not giving me everything perfectly. I understand that there may be some either bias or incorrect elements in it, but what's fascinating is that I'm able to make more progress as a learner because I essentially have this sort of artificial intelligence tutor, which is a little odd and it feels a little weird, but like it's, my whole sort of use of the tool has really evolved from being one of sort of single prompt to being much more conversational. And I wonder if that's sort of the root of this concept of chat, right?

This idea that it's meant to be more of an interplay in an exchange, more than just a single answer.

Christina Lewellen: Yeah, we're training it as much as it's training us, and I think that most folks I've talked to about ChatGPT are having that, that evolution of how they interact with it. So it always starts, I think almost everyone has their “what was the first prompt you gave it” story. For us on the ATLIS side, we were going about our business and we told it to write a cyber breach incident response plan for an independent school.

And what it spit out was shockingly appropriate. And we're like, oh, okay, that's, now so for the association side, we also have to go, okay, so how do we take this next level? If someone can easily go find value in an incident response plan, you know, what's our role to go to the next level?

Paul Turnbull: I specifically asked it to develop a high school unit for an English class without sacrificing student unique voice. And because that was in response, right? And I'm a former English teacher, so I, I understand, you know, sort of the, oh my goodness. Are we talking about just 100% plagiarism for the rest of our lives?

And in this particular case, it was, it was along the lines of understanding that, again, if, if it can be a tool, then perhaps we should start working on driving questions, right? It's sort of these essential questions like, how do we enhance the teaching and learning experience using AI assisted tools rather than, you know, put up the blockades and, and try to figure out, how we stop people from storming the Bastille or something like that.

Christina Lewellen: Right. And that's why I think independent schools have a really unique opportunity to shape the conversation of how specifically ChatGPT is going to be used as an educational tool. Because a lot of our public school counterparts are just blocking it. Like just, we don't know what to do with this yet. It's too much. Time out, they're blocking it. And so what I love about the independent school community is that we're willing to kind of get our hands dirty with it and see what it can truly do. 

We at the ATLIS community are, we're gathering our folks together and having conversations regularly since this came out. Say, what are you doing? How's it going? What have you had to adjust in terms of protecting your students and their data? We're hearing about some teachers that are using it to, let's say for example, they're teaching a class, but there's a few students that have a lower grade level reading capability. You know, they'll just take an assignment and chuck it into ChatGPT and tell it to take it down a notch or take it up a notch and AI is doing that for them. 

I know Mid-Pacific faculty have this kind of mindset. So I think that you really are among the best of the best, but, you know, what are some of the creative ways that, that your community is using it for in the classroom?

Paul Turnbull: Well, I would say, you know, from the humanities, it's already I mentioned a couple of the resources that we have put out for our teachers already. You know, as a peer editor. So we talked about that and you know, you've, you've both talked a little bit about that. As a collaborator, you know, the idea that you can maintain your voice, but you show, it's essentially it's the assessment for learning versus of learning, right? So your assessment of your writing ability, like Tim, your daughter, you know, on, on day one is one thing. But if you can show that you used a number of tools, including generative AI, and here's the end result, you know, maybe it's two weeks later, that's an assessment for learning. What, you know, what was your path and what did you, you use yourself to really become this more robust, well-rounded writer.

So there's those things. We have an, an English language development program here. We also have, you know, some really good conversations around how the students can use ChatGPT as a sounding board and use new vocabulary. And then we go all the way up into science and we've got a number of different labs that we are asking kids to look at. Our computer science classes in coding, the coding teacher is fantastic. And she's basically saying, look, you know, show me your original draft. Show me how you're using GPT to debug, and then show me how, sort of the second pass, right. How you have learned from those things. 

But I think, again, going back to what I originally started with, with that open mind, if we do see it as a tool and we do see it as something that is, it's generative in the way that we use it as well. So, back to, you know, Tim, you were saying your evolution of questioning, right? The way in which you're using it. If that's true and we adopt that, then the big question becomes, all right, how can we have a more in-depth question about ethics?

Where does ChatGPT show up in this conversation? Where do I show up in the conversation and what's my voice? Because schools should be about voice, right? Especially student voice. So that, that's the thing I, I like the most, we're, we're sort of keeping that North Star in place, you know, what's best for students and how do we help the helpers.

Tim Fish: Yeah. And I, I think you're right. I mean, it's finding your voice. You know, I was doing a thing recently, I was writing like a blog post and I, you know, I don't know, four or five paragraphs on, I think a lot about strategy. It was on strategy, and I took the whole thing. I just said, edit this, and pasted it into ChatGPT.

And it moved a whole bunch of stuff around and it changed some of my paragraphs, and I would say about 30% of the changes I really liked. I was like, you know, that paragraph feels better now. But I would say about 70% of the changes were actually what I, what got lost, Paul, was my voice.

And it started sounding more like ChatGPT wrote it, right? And so what was interesting to me is that now I had my original and I had this new sort of edited version and I had to say, where's my voice in this? What am I as a writer trying to convey? And is, is there little things here that make sense organizationally? But even then I made changes to it, right? So it wasn't, what was interesting to me is it wasn't about me feeding it in and saying correct it for grammar. We've had Grammarly for years, which also is driven by AI in case anybody didn't know. Like Grammarly is, is a form of narrow, more narrow form of generative AI. But we've had it for a long time. 

But it was that notion for me, like, It doesn't mean I don't need to be a writer. It means I have to have even a better understanding of my voice and what I'm trying to say and the point of view that I value. Right. So that's, I think, a different piece for me. And so it almost yanks us up levels on Maslow's hierarchy. Right. If it's just about basic understanding, well, like, ChatGPT is going to be able to give us that. I mean, it's taken the LSAT, it's taken the medical exams. And everyone tells me that that ChatGPT 4 is going to blow the current version away. So like we haven't seen anything yet in terms of the power of these tools.

And so this notion of like, how we sort of live in this world, I think is a really good one. And Paul, I think you're spot on. And Christina, I think we need to lift up the kinds of thinking that we're asking our students to do, because if working in partnership with these other tools, they can really excel.

So I'm, I'm curious, in the post-ChatGPT world, what things do you think we should be seeing more of in school, and what things do you think maybe we should be seeing less of in school?

Christina Lewellen: Well, I think that to start, I mean I can speak from sort of an organization that sees schools around the country kind of wrestling this in real time. I think the thing we need to do is give our, our faculty and our staff time to understand what all this is. Not all of us are as comfortable with these types of tools. There are some great resources out there, including ISTE has an AI curriculum, MIT has a cool day of AI, and that can bring faculty along.

So if you're all kind of, yeah. If you're struggling to know, like, how this fits and where to begin, or if you're feeling overwhelmed by the headlines, obviously it's pretty simple to get in there and just get your hands dirty and play with it and see what it can do. But if you're really looking for other educators and other thought leaders in education to help you sort your own thoughts on this, those resources can help.

And I think beyond that, you know, we are shifting. We may need to look at our academic integrity policies just to make sure that we're being clear to our students. You know, we wanna make sure that the language that we used to use, like no more photocopying answers, you know, we had to update at some point those integrity type policies to address, for example, Wiki.

You know, when Wikipedia came out and, and everybody was afraid about what that would do in the educational space, it's time for us to kind of just make sure that our policies are both clear to our learners, but also are updated to reflect some advancements in this space. And so I think it's just going to take a little bit of time, but certainly our students are going to use this one way or the other. 

And the only other thing that I would just kind of add is an important kind of asterisk for where we need to think and, and this is coming from that tech side and making sure that we're protecting our students, you know. OpenAI, the company that designed ChatGPT, it collects a ton of data on the users, right?

And so the privacy policy of ChatGPT is pretty, like not many people take the time to read that before they click accept. And certainly our students are unlikely to read that language or even understand the implications. But we have to help them understand that this data, it can be shared with third party vendors, law enforcement. The tool is, you know, you're supposed to check that you're 18 years old. But it should certainly not be used by anyone who is younger than 13 years old. 

So I understand that a lot of schools, as they're dealing with ChatGPT, are making sure that teachers are kind of coming at it and saying, this is a tool. I am not forcing you to use it. I'm not advocating that you use it, but if you do use it, you need to understand the implications of using it. Because at the end of the day, while that account can be deleted, sort of like we all had to teach our students about social media, you know, you can delete your account, but that doesn't mean the content that you put there is gone.

It's the same situation with ChatGPT. So if you go ahead and try to delete your account you can do that. But any input, Tim, that you ever did when you were playing with it. All your inputs live forever. They, they're not deleted. So that means that sometimes things like sensitive or controversial information, questions, queries, they don't go away even if your account goes away.

So some important things to keep in mind, especially with our young learners.

Paul Turnbull: That's where, you know, I, I'd jump off on that a little bit as well and, and say that, you know, part of the conversation that we're having with our, our faculty involves their own personal stance as well. That yes, it's about data collection. It's about data usage and, and sort of over the long arc of what, you know, generative AI may look like 10, 12 years from now, which is a, a ridiculous amount of time in the technological world.

But we're, we've given teachers statements as well, you know, there's a statement for teachers who are saying, yes, this is allowable in my course. Here's what it looks like. And there's a statement for, for teachers who are saying, this is not allowable in my course right now, and this is why. And then there's, you know, there's the reintroduction to the student handbook, which involves the honor code.

The, the motto of, Mid-Pacific's motto is, “The honor of my school is mine.” Again, like generative AI and ethics, we have a conversation about what those things really mean. And again, if you can get above the transactional nature of a tool and you can realize that this tool can be used for really great things, or it can be used for not so great things, then you're having a really, a critically based discussion. And I think that's where schools really need to go, but it will take time. 

And so, you know, Tim, getting back to your, your question about, you know, a post-GPT world and what is it going to look like? I, frankly, I would love to see GPT as, as a, almost a bridge or a unifier to allow more interdisciplinary studies between courses and subjects around campuses. If you think about most high schools, we have silos in terms of departments. Those silos rarely interact with each other because of bell schedules and because of all kinds of Carnegie units that we have to count and all these other things. But at the end of the day, if it's possible to say, you know what? We have this amazing visual arts class and we have this amazing game design class, and we have this music class, how might we work together? So that there's the sense of almost a little studio that we can put together because we're looking at student creativity. And this is where I think deeper learning is really the, it's having its day, right.

It's about to have its moment. And deeper learning, the, the core tenets of that are mastery, creativity, and identity. If we can have courses and departments working with each other to lift mastery, creativity, and identity, now that's a different student experience. And we get back to what I was talking about before, how the real world is always ahead of schools as institutions. Perhaps there's a way where we can use generative AI to start really pulling the threads between those departments a little closer. And now the student experience is a little more real world. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Tim Fish: It's never been more important, I think, in many ways to have those conversations and continue to. Many of our schools are already deep in those conversations with students, which is essential work. You know, but for me, I was having a conversation with my friend Michael Nachbar, who runs Global Online Academy, and we were sort of chatting about this as well, as I've been chat, as my wife said, chatting with everyone about this topic.

Christina Lewellen: You'll have to apologize because I know I started it. So please tell your wife, I'm sorry!

Tim Fish: I sure will. I'll tell her. So, you know, the thing that Michael and I were talking about was that like sort of three things we're going to need, to can, emerge. And three really good things. One is the increase in the importance of curiosity, right? If you are curious about anything. Think about what the world is like now when you can just ask questions and explore topics and get quick answers and think about stuff, right? So curiosity has never been more important, and we in our schools need to create and cultivate really rich curiosity on part of our students.

The second is this idea of creativity, Paul, that you talked about and how we unlock, how we use interdisciplinary connections. How we use creative questions. How we set new structures with teachers to create a complex world where kids are doing real work with their peers to explore new topics that have never been talked about before. New questions that have never been investigated, right? So creativity comes up. And then I think those two give way to the important nature of creation.

That now it's about making something, putting your ideas in the world. You know, coming up with a point of view on something. And so if you think about it, like for me, I'm like that, we need to be designing more for that, right? And if we're designing more for that, we're going to need to be asking ourselves, okay, what's holding, what's standing in our way of creating schools that look like that? Right. And you know, I was talking with somebody the other day and we were talking about how like, so much of what we love to see in school, we see after school, right? The robotics club, the rope, the, the rocket club, the, the kids taking a car apart, you know, all these things that are like, super cool.

They often happen outside of school. And I'm not saying great things aren't happening in school, but why can't we flip it and bring that stuff in during the day? That becomes more of school. And I've been arguing for that for a long time, way before ChatGPT. But I think with this tool in hand, it becomes even more powerful. Right. And that, for me is that's, that's what's gone around in my head. I'm like, all right, how do we kind of, how does this become a lever? That helps us get even farther that way.

Paul Turnbull: I love where you're going with this, Tim. So, you know, when I describe breaking down the silos on a campus and more interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, that's the, that's the horizontal, right? Just, just one campus as a blanket. But the vertical would be how do we also pull in nonprofits in the community and industry, and how can you have ways of doing the things that you're talking about, you know, if it's robotics or if it's rapid prototyping or, or anything, you know, museum studies. How do we integrate the real world again in such a way that makes sense for both parties, right? For a school and for the, the nonprofit. If in the museum case.

And it's possible to do those things. This is where I think I go back to something, Christina, you had said earlier about the way that independent schools can be essentially like labs, right? And, and ultimately if we have a little more flexibility than the public school system does because it has a number of super structures within which it has to operate, then we also have the responsibility to find out how we can beta test these things, and then develop curriculum to teach teachers who are in the public sector.

And that's something that we're doing as well at Mid-Pacific. We have a professional development office. And you know, it's so important to just be able to, with empathy, come to teachers with this, in the idea of a force multiplier, right? If I teach one teacher who has 25 or 30 students per class times five you know, periods a day, well, that's much wider of an effect than if I can teach 20 students. 

So our goal then is to say, okay, again, who are the helpers? What does this look like? What's the context? And then I do think that there's a responsibility for independent schools to go to their neighbors and say, here's what we're seeing and here's how we think this might work. But let's work with you. Let, let me listen to where you are and what you think you would like out of this. And then it's a dialogue, but we’ll help you build an academic unit around it.

Christina Lewellen: I love that. I think that's a really great role for us to play. And I think that it's not just in counterparts in education, but like you mentioned, it could be in business, it could be among our retired communities, you know, near where we live or whatever. I mean, I think that there is a cool opportunity for us to also be you know examples of how this sort of technology can change many folks' worlds, not just in the education sector.

Paul Turnbull: Yeah, I, I totally agree. 

Tim Fish: That’s right on. You know, I also think it's going to, it's going to evolve. Recently, I was at a conference event, and I was talking with a good friend of mine. And we somehow got talking about Amazon's Alexa. Right. And, and this person said, you know, she said, I don't want that thing in my house. I don't want anything. I don't want anything listening to what I'm saying all the time. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Totally. You're a hundred percent, you're... and you, like you said, Paul, you have the right to make the decision. I'm not going to bring Alexa into my house. I'm not going to have that thing listening.

But I also looked down, I noticed that she had an Apple watch on and I said, you know, like that thing is listening to everything you're saying. And she said, what do you mean? And I said, just pick it up and say, “Hey, Siri.” Right. Which she did. And it, you know, responded. And I said, yeah, like. It's listening. And, and all of a sudden it was like, what? Like, oh no. How long's it been listening? I'm like, I don't know. How long have you had it? Right? And, and so this idea that this is, it just becomes part of the water. It become, you know, it's just an, everything is listening. And I know that's strange and I know that, that a lot of folks say, I don't want that. And they have the right to turn that off and should know that they can turn it off. Right. I think that's one of the key things, but I think the same is going to happen with generative AI. Right? 

Right now it's contained inside this box of ChatGPT, but we know that Google's going to come out with their version very soon. We know that Amazon, I'm sure, will come out with theirs. It'll be, it'll be fully integrated into Siri and Alexa and everything else as well as Microsoft. It owns so much of OpenAI and they're going to weave it into everything in a Microsoft Word environment and office suite. And so we are going to be in a world where this is everywhere and anywhere we need it, right? So I think that is an evolution that even more forces us to think about, how do we lift the levels of Maslow's hierarchy and start getting to much, much higher levels of thinking than maybe we've done before? Because I think that's really the opportunity, in my mind.

Paul Turnbull: Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, ultimately that means every office, support office on a school campus as well. You know, ultimately, if generative AI is going to evolve at a rapid pace. I mean, if you look at the, sort of the technology life cycle and, and the advancement cycle, now it's a hockey stick, right?

So it's just climbing so quickly. Well then, what then would stop any particular school from saying ChatGPT or its, you know, its successor or, you know, any other program that comes from any other company other than open AI should only be limited to the classroom. Why wouldn't it be potentially used in the business office or in admissions or, well, certainly in our, in our IT and, and ET, EdTech offices.

All of these things have the ability to go a little bit beyond automation. I think that's the other thing for people to, to try to grasp, is that we're not talking about simple automation, you know, the graphing calculator kind of thing, or the low level reading and regurgitating. But if it truly is generative, then now strategic planning takes on a whole different sort of mindset as well.

We just had, I'll give you an example. We're, we're currently reviewing and renewing our mission statement. So, you know, there's a, we have a committee, they're fantastic individuals and I love working with them because the, the conversations have been really, really very engaging. We've been talking for a year, we've gotten down to five different iterations of what a new mission statement might look like. We're going to narrow that down to two and then we're going to go out, you know, do our world cafes with all our constituent groups. What I hadn't told them is that two of those five came from ChatGPT, and one of the two was chosen. So we have, you know, version one and version two, and one of them came from ChatGPT.

But like what we've been talking about over the course of this discussion, there was sort of the stages of grief of, you know, an acceptance of like, well, but no, that's not possible. They can't possibly understand, you know, they, the invisible they, open AI. Can't understand who we are, et cetera, et cetera. But all that's going to do is scrape information about who you are and what you do, and give it back to you in such a way to say, is this a reflection of who you actually are?

And like student voice, we were able as a group to say, I like the spine of that particular version, but we're going to modify it and make it a little bit more of our own. So now potentially, and this is what I love about Mid-Pacific, we have this, you know, it's, it's a wonderful place. I've clearly, clearly drunk the Kool-Aid a long time ago, but one day, if that one iteration is chosen, how interesting would it be that generative AI was a voice amongst the community's voice in really articulating what Mid-Pacific's vision might be?

Christina Lewellen: Absolutely! It's a new member of your committee.

Tim Fish: It was a partner in the process. Right. It was not the, it didn't do it. You didn't offload it to it. Right. You still had control, but it was a partner. It was, and it, and it unlocked some thinking that hadn't emerged from the people in the room. Right. Which is, that's exactly it. That's where we want it to be. Right. We want to give every teacher and every student, you know, and I think your point about the age appropriateness, Christina, is really a good one. And we need to follow the rules. We need to have students, if it's 18, we need to say, I think, you know, like, hey, this is for 18 year olds and above. Like that's, that's where it is at the moment. I think very soon it'll be built into a lot of other tools.

But this notion that we can have a partner who unlocks our thinking. You know, I, I was talking to a teacher the other day who said they thought it was going to be a great way to help students get unstuck. 

Christina Lewellen: It's a great way for adults to become unstuck, even in our day-to-day. You know, write a marketing plan and it gets you going. It, it's great for everybody.

Tim Fish: It helps you say, like it did with me, that's not what I was trying to say. And this is what I was trying to say, like, because it forces you to then find your clarity and to find your voice. Right. And so it's, it is a, it is going to be a fascinating, fascinating thing to see this move forward. 

Where do you also see, you know, one of the things for me that really was surprising is I couldn't, I didn't predict it. The day before you sent it to me, Christina, I wasn't thinking about, oh, this thing's going to be coming out soon. And then you sent it to me. I knew of elements of it, but I didn't know of it in that way yet. Right. And so what I'm curious about is, what's the next surprise that maybe we haven't been thinking about? Where this is going to come into our students' lives, our teachers' lives, and, and society in general.

Christina Lewellen: Well, I think that this is just a wonderful moment to stick a flag in the ground and say, do our policies and philosophies align with how quickly things are moving? So, like Paul says, the hockey stick of innovation and, you know, whatever the next thing is, Tim, I mean, it'll be the, a next version of this or maybe we are in some ways amplifying how quickly this is all going to go because we're feeding the beast, so to speak, with additional information.

I really think that whatever is next, this is maybe a reminder coming out of a rough couple of years where we've been a little distracted from technology. That technology is a core and central piece of schools’ ability to accomplish their missions. And if schools are not thinking about technology and innovation in these ways, then you're missing this huge opportunity. You know, and I think that a lot of schools that are really embracing both ChatGPT and the implications of AI in a really open-minded way, like what Paul is having in his community, are the ones that are staying proactive and intentionally kind of staying ahead of the curve so that they're shaping their mission based on current environments, current scenarios, and, and what our students are dealing with, what our educators are dealing with. It isn't what it was before I sent you that link, right? That your life is different now, Tim. You, you are irrevocably changed.

Tim Fish: It is different now.

Christina Lewellen: And so if we take that tiny example and now we say, okay, this is a big change agent in our schools. it is time to take a brief moment to reflect on what that means, because rather than being afraid of what it means, I think looking at the opportunities that it brings to really weave technology into how we accomplish our missions, there's some cool opportunity, especially for the schools that have been a little hesitant to, to, you know, bring that into their world. It's time. There's not, there's no ostrich situation, head in the sand situation that's going to let us get out of this. We, we're going to have to think about it and be proactive.

Paul Turnbull: You know, the, five years ago or so, I spoke at a conference in Dubai and, and the conference essentially at the time was really focused on this, on EdTech and, you know, the, the huge blue sky version of what that might be. And of course, VR was the, the biggest thing of the day. The hype around VR and what it would be.

And Mid-Pacific has, has a pretty robust program that includes VR and AR and, and MR, so mixed reality as well. But it became clear pretty quickly that it was limited in scope. If it's one to one in terms of headsets to students, clearly sharing a group of, of VR headsets in a pandemic is not something that you, you do wisely.

Tim Fish: No.

Paul Turnbull: What I find really interesting is that that conversation was based on, you know, sort of running down the road of would VR or could VR become like the super teacher? And ultimately no was the answer. Because humans are humans and human interaction is important. So that goes back to, to mid Pacific's tech vision and our driving question, which is how can technology enhance the human experience, not drive it? And so what I find really interesting about this moment, however, is that you've got generative AI that will absolutely accelerate and will become more robust. The fact that it may, its use case is, is far greater than VR, by the way, right? It can be used everywhere versus, you know, a headset, so to speak.

But if you combine, if you let me geek out for a second, if you like, if you combined, let's say, AI in its third iteration from where we are today. And you combine the VR component and, and the mixed reality component, and you plan around common issues that, global issues that need to be solved. You know, food insecurity, water right now is clearly an issue. We're not even going to get into the, the, the really abstract, huge issue around climate.

Tim Fish: Yeah.

Paul Turnbull: But if you focused on those two things, those exist in any country. And so what if you were able, in a virtual environment, able to bring together, I don't know, call it 10, 16, 17, 18 year olds, and teachers who were experts in this and maybe some industry experts, and in this virtual sort of environment, they were able to work on a common project. You know, we're in North America, we go to sleep after our day of work on this project, and somebody in the next hemisphere wakes up and they jump in. The most amazing thing out of that would be not only the cultural quotient, right? There's IQ, EQ, and, and CQ, the cultural quotient. So now we understand interplay between networks and cultures, but what if one day there was the ability to create this solution in the virtual environment, but essentially, export it into the real world.

You know, if we design a better windmill or we design a better water transportation system that you can manipulate in the virtual world, you know, with haptics and, and a variety of other things. And then now we can 3D print it in the real world, turn it, reverse engineer it through AutoCAD, and now you can actually export it. It's a true collaboration for real purpose. and schools just happened to be the facilitators. They weren't the castle, you know, with the highest walls that only had the best stuff inside those walls.

Tim Fish: That's right. It is the great equalizer and I think you're spot on. Just like this AI thing we were talking about for years, it's sort of like, Hey, what's that going to be? And we didn't really have a clear sense. And then bam, this dropped on the world and it was like, oh I think the same is going to hold true for several other technologies.

I think there will be in the not very distant future a VR equivalent where you go, oh, it's really different now. All of us have put on headsets and been like, okay, it's not really there yet. Right? It's kind of there. I think that day is not very far away, where we are going to experience it in a way that is a game changer, in the same way that generative AI is perceiving to become quite a game changer on how we operate in the world.

Christina Lewellen: We were due for a game changer. You know, like we had been a little bit complacent for a while.

Tim Fish: So what do we do when we come across game changers, right? That's what this conversation's really about, right? When game Changers come into our school, how do we respond?

So my last question to you, because this has been a phenomenal conversation, is what are your hopes for our schools for, for Paul, for Mid-Pacific and all of our other schools? Christina, for all the schools that you work with? What are your hopes for where this is all going to go for the future, for the next five years in our schools?

Paul Turnbull: You know, the first thing that I would start by saying, I would hope, given the fact that the educational community includes, in this particular case, independent schools, public schools, and charter schools. I would hope for a true answer to the equity and access question that needs to be addressed. That we can, at Mid-Pacific we're, you know, we're really very, very fortunate to have a number of different opportunities to work with the programs and the people that we do.

But not every school is like that. And so my hope is that there is the idea of finding a way for students all over the country to experience what we're talking about and climb that, that ladder you know, toward critical thinking, creativity that, that we talked about a little bit earlier. Beyond that, having teachers understand what this means, what it looks like, not feel the, the feeling of threat, but instead feeling that, you know, I, I don't want to over romanticize it, but feeling that warmth of, okay. there is something here that can really be helpful and might actually be stimulating for me in my career.

I think the final piece out of that is that all together, schools, K-12, pre, preschool through 12, and then higher education, start forming relationships to really work together and understand how these tools are not meant in disparate, or to be used in disparate circles.

Christina Lewellen: I completely agree and I think my wish for all of this is that it's, it is that wake up call for the independent school community, having come through a difficult couple of years. It's like eye on the prize. Let's come back to what the potential and possibility of the future is. And if that means that some administrators are slightly uncomfortable for a little bit until they get used to this, that's okay, because I think that that drives progress and it drives us to kind of go next level. And I think that our communities deserve that. 

I think ChatGPT is an example. It's a wake up call. It's time to pay attention. Which is why, you know, we are really proud and excited about partnering up with NAIS to have, you know, an event where we're looking specifically at the future of an AI shaping, shaped education. You know, what does it look like? What do we do with it?

It's not a summit on ChatGPT, it, you know, it's a summit on, okay. ChatGPT gave us a little slap across the face or a little water to wake us up or whatever the, the analogy is. Now that we're there, now that we're awake, let's brainstorm. Let's come together with higher ed and or community thought leaders and have conversations about what's next.

I'm excited about that. I'm really excited to see what the independent school community will, will do with that.

Tim Fish: So am I. I think you're both talking about this idea of collaboration, humans coming together, inventing for the future with our, for our young people, creating opportunities for them and for our staff to imagine what an enhanced education can continue to look like. And I think you're right. I think the internet, you know, in the late nineties, that was a game changer, right?

Like, and we've had elements of it along the way, but I don't know that we've had one as significant as this. Right. And I think what we're going to find is the game changers are going to keep coming and they're going to come faster, right? And so we live in a game changer world and we need to think about how to adapt to it.

This has been such a great conversation. Thank you both. I knew it would be, I knew just getting the two of you on a call, we would not have any problem thinking about what to talk about, so what a gift. I look forward to continuing the conversation. And Christina, I look forward to the summit that we're going to have at the ATLIS conference in April. It's going to be wonderful.

Christina Lewellen: So proud to partner with NAIS on that, because I think that getting technology people and heads and leaders in a room to figure this out, really exciting.

Tim Fish: Super exciting. Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you so much, Christina. All the best.

Paul Turnbull: Thank you. This was fantastic.

Christina Lewellen: Thank you so much.